Traumatic spinal cord injury (hereinafter “SCI”) is a devastating clinical condition afflicting thousands of individuals each year worldwide, for which no appropriate treatment has so far been developed. The ongoing development of SCI animal models reflect the persistent need for a better mimic of human injury in order to reliably investigate neuro-physiological mechanisms, pathology and potential therapies.
Approximately, more than half of the human SCI cases affect cervical regions, resulting in impairments of motor functions of the upper extremity. Even modest recovery of upper extremity function could have a vast impact on quality of life for quadriplegics. High cervical level injuries can result in diaphragm dysfunction due to interruption of bulbospinal respiratory drive to Phrenic Motor Neurons pools (C3-C6). An essential feature of cervical SCI models is that they must be incomplete to preserve an adequate degree of function to allow survival of animals.
Different models of the injury in human SCIs are compression, contusion, laceration, transaction, dislocation, distraction and traction of the spinal cord. Since the most of the human traumatic SCIs occur as a result of vertebral fractures or dislocations, the most clinically relevant injury models are those, in which spinal cord is compressed. Compression models contribute to simulating persistent spinal canal occlusion that is common in human SCIs and investigating the effects of compression or optimal timing of decompression.
Thus, there is a major need to develop experimental models and methods applicable in animal models for simulating human cervical SCIs to evaluate shortages and recovery of the forelimb motor function. More specifically, there is a need for a unilateral compressive SCI model to compress exactly half of the spinal cord of an animal model and preserving animal survival during subsequent studies and experiments.